From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 16 08:44:47 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 876DF16A4F2 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:44:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk [81.2.69.218]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBB4D43FF2 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:44:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: from happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) h9GFi6HR005735 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:44:36 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from matthew@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: (from matthew@localhost)id h9GFi6Z2005734; Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:44:06 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from matthew) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:44:06 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman To: Dinesh Nadarajah Message-ID: <20031016154406.GA5114@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> Mail-Followup-To: Matthew Seaman , Dinesh Nadarajah , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20031016145900.93573.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20031016145900.93573.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.9 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=2.60 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.60 (1.212-2003-09-23-exp) on happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Howto find packages X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:44:47 -0000 --LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 07:59:00AM -0700, Dinesh Nadarajah wrote: > I come form the Debian Linux world and would like to know how I can > information about packages for installation. I use prots to install > some, but many of them I just want to install binary files. Debian apt is certainly one of the better package management systems. =20 > For eample, in Debian, I can use "apt-cache search mozilla" and this > will list all packages with mozilla in it and then I can select the > package for installation. The emphasis in FreeBSD is generally on ports rather than packages. For many ports, downloading the source and compiling doesn't take a great deal longer than downloading a binary package. Of course, for some ports compilation takes quite a lot longer. You can use the ports tree to search for what ports/packages are available: % cd /usr/ports % make search key=3Dfoo % make search name=3Dbar and you can also 'make readmes' which builds a series of .html files that you can browse through to find stuff. It's essentially the same as what's at http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html There's also http://www.freshports.org/ which has a lot of port related stuff. =20 > In FreeBSD, when I run "pkg_add -r mozilla" I keep getting an error > stating that it could not download package ftp://....../mozilla.tgz. >=20 > Is there a better way to find what ackages are available for > installation? Generally the way to find out what packages are available is to scan what's available on the FTP sites. You can do in a slightly more user friendly that using /stand/sysinstall (/usr/sbin/sysinstall if you're on 5.x) by going to the 'Configure' and then 'Packages' menus. However, sysinstall will try and locate a directory on the FTP servers that matches the version number of your system. This quite often fails: there's not enough room on the FTP servers to keep sets of packages for more than 4 or 5 releases (plus the packages for old releases soon start to be a long way behind the times). Eg. look at: http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/ to see which releases have packages available. Note too that sysinstall isn't very sophisticated in the way that it tries to work out what package directory to choose: for instance, if you're tracking 4-STABLE right now, sysinstall complains because it can't find a directory for 4.9-RC2. Note too that the packages on the FTP sites are updated "when possible". There will be an "official" set of packages built for each release -- the 4.9-RELEASE packages went up to the FTP sites quite recently (even though 4.9 hasn't been released yet), which means that the package building cluster has had to be devoted to doing the packages for the release and hasn't had much spare time for producing updated packages for either 4-stable or 5-current recently. There will be a 'Latest' directory for recently updated packages: for 4-STABLE packages the last updates where apparently around 24th September which predates the most recent updates to the ports tree. Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK --LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/jrzGdtESqEQa7a0RAvpLAJ9HUkzuSWyVv0eYIsvVO/XgUno+4QCfaT7X cnjV+0T0WJuha6TbE2glpu8= =APuk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X--